If its only a 10% increase, where does this put the chip against a current 3770k on single core performance. Which I believe was faster on single threaded applications than the 3970k. I know the 2011 series is all about the cores, but for the kind of money these chips command you want the fastest single threaded performance as well.

Welcome to Intel's world of zero Competition and only giving the public the bare minimum performance boost.

..Thanks AMD, thanks for the Bulldozer fiasco and giving Intel a free ride.

I think 'diminishing returns' is what Intel is coming up against. In the old days it was easy enough to drop in extra compute units, drop the FAB size and they were brilliant to come up with the Core and Core 2 designs. However at some point, as with the P4, its no use trying to squeeze more out of the hose.

Welcome to Intel's world of zero Competition and only giving the public the bare minimum performance boost.

..Thanks AMD, thanks for the Bulldozer fiasco and giving Intel a free ride.

I think 'diminishing returns' is what Intel is coming up against. In the old days it was easy enough to drop in extra compute units, drop the FAB size and they were brilliant to come up with the Core and Core 2 designs. However at some point, as with the P4, its no use trying to squeeze more out of the hose.

Time for an architecture change then. At least Intel can afford the R&D cost.

Welcome to Intel's world of zero Competition and only giving the public the bare minimum performance boost.

..Thanks AMD, thanks for the Bulldozer fiasco and giving Intel a free ride.

It's a little short-sighted to be blaming AMD for this when it's not really their fault. Keep in mind their entire net income of last year was LESS than Intel's PROFIT. It's hard to pay for engineers when people would rather pay extra for a few additional FPS or some higher arbitrary number.

Anyways more on topic of the product itself, CPUs these days have more to worry about than just performance, power efficiency is a big deal now. Perhaps IB-E is considerably more power efficient than SB-E.

Things may change with AMD winning all the next gen consoles. With that amount of income could see them spending on more research and come out with a better architecture, which they may have a come back to rival Intel.

You got to question why/how AMD has won these contracts - Have they got something up their sleves?

You got to question why/how AMD has won these contracts - Have they got something up their sleves?

Things like this I always remember something a friend of mine once said -

Be better or be cheaper. Offer something the competition can't/doesn't or offer the same thing for less money... If you're both [better and cheaper], you're laughing... If you're neither, you're ****ed...

Will be interesting to see if Intel made the same mistake with these chip's as they did with the standard Ivy Bridge CPU's in terms of the thermal paste fiasco, causing most people who want low temp's with high speeds to void the warranty on the cpu, by de-lidding it.

If it's 10% faster but uses 20% less power then that's a win in my book, but I don't know yet if I will or would be willing to drop the cash on a IB-E cpu for 10% performance gain over my SB-E.

Things may change with AMD winning all the next gen consoles. With that amount of income could see them spending on more research and come out with a better architecture, which they may have a come back to rival Intel.

You got to question why/how AMD has won these contracts - Have they got something up their sleves?

I stick with my original theory that it was partly that AMD was a one-stop for the console makers, CPU and GPU both from the same shop. I also have a suspicion that Intel and NVidia weren't all that interested - it's good publicity, but rumored to be comparatively low-profit. NVidia and Intel are both making money hand over fist, and enjoy solid positions in their markets. AMD is going broke and has a shaky position. It was reasonable to assume the next-gen consoles would be x86-based, and there aren't exactly a lot of other shops that can do that. Getting the GPU from the same house just keeps things easier (and likely cheaper on MS & Sony.)

Things may change with AMD winning all the next gen consoles. With that amount of income could see them spending on more research and come out with a better architecture, which they may have a come back to rival Intel.

You got to question why/how AMD has won these contracts - Have they got something up their sleves?

I wouldn't automatically assume that there is a lot of money in providing chips for the next gen consoles.

If the rumours are true AMD are providing the first batch of chips for each console around 2-3mil give or take,( its where all there tsmc space has gone hence not alot of new pc parts this year) then they are just given licence money after that. The licence money will be between 50-100mil per console per year so we are not talking huge sums.

Nvidia did not want to do it for this gen stating it was more hassle than it was worth. Intel have never offered themselves to a console manufacture or anybody for that matter so I'd say they were a none entity. IBM with power pc would be the other option.